The article directly compares the NY subway project to a french one, and finds that it was cheaper and had a quarter of the staffing. So since we've established time and money is not being wasted by not employing 4x the people, all you have to do is check and see if French public construction is more dangerous than the US, and you'll know if elevator operators and underground break room guards are important safety roles.

In the public sector, unions and engineering firms/management contractors are not at odds as they are in the private sector, they collaborate to rip off the public.

==it's worth keeping in mind that what looks like redundant waste is sometimes an important guard against some kind of failure. Just because it isn't always used doesn't mean that it's not worthwhile.==

Even more likely is that the redundancy exists because of something bad that happened in the past. That is how most regulation comes into existence.

I think if there's a money saving argument, you wouldn't need to put that in the union contract.

Companies will want to save money and you don't need to force them to save money.

It's clearly a "job saving" argument and not a "money saving" one.